[pjmlp]

Not really, because this is Windows we are talking about.

A traditonal Windows application would be using the Windows APIs, and not the C standard library, e.g. FillMemory() instead of memset(), thus there is no DLLs to ship with the application.

As can be seen on Petzold books examples.

[TonyTrapp]

This code is not from the Petzold books. It literally includes and uses string.h, stdlib.h and time.h. It is not using WinAPI equivalents of C functions.

[pjmlp]

Exactly why there is still enough room to be a smaller executable.